Under the shadow of the great Himalayas, Mohammad Yousuf stares at his saffron fields in quiet desperation.

A resident of Pampore, Kashmir, the 58-year-old has been cultivating saffron all his life, just like his father and grandfather before him. But if things continue as they are, he knows future generations may never see what he’s seeing.

“This land, and its purple flowers, once gave us pride. They meant everything to our family. Now, the bloom is fading and so is our hope,” he says, glancing at the dry, cracked patches where saffron once grew so abundantly that it hid the ground beneath.

It’s a lament echoed by farmers across Kashmir’s saffron belt, spanning Pulwama and Budgam districts. And justifiably so. In 2024, Kashmir’s total saffron production was 2.7 tonnes—about two-thirds down from 8 tonnes in 2011, the Indian government told Parliament in December. Even the area under cultivation has droppedMongabayIndoor saffron farming offers hope amidst declining saffron production nearly 58% since the turn of the century to 2,390 hectares in 2019.

For context, it takes 150 crocus flowers to produce a single gram of saffron. Broader picture: while a regular spice like cumin gives a yield of 600kg per acre, saffron yieldsBusiness InsiderWhy Real Saffron is So Expensive a meagre 1.8kg.

And now, even that’s not guaranteed.

“We used to get a few kilograms of saffron from our 14-acre field. This season, we barely got 150 grams,” says Ali Mohammad Reshi, a 60-year-old farmer from the town of Khrew, not far from Pampore. “The heat, dust from cement factories, and poor irrigation destroyed everything.”

Climate change has undoubtedly ravagedDown To EarthBuried in cement dust: Kashmir’s saffron production takes a hit, farmers forced to switch occupation Kashmir’s saffron fields with rising temperatures and uneven rainfall. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger failure lies in India’s inability to build a sustainable economy around Kashmir’s “red gold”, the way it did with, say, tea or cardamom.

Here’s the truth: saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world, and its price is only increasing.